Stop Bleeding Your Business's Precious Resources - Time Management

If you survey 1000 small businesses that failed, trends will start to emerge. There are solid similarities between companies that succeed and companies that fail. One of the common factors among the companies that fail is the unchecked bleeding of resources, both financial and man power.

The start up phase of any business is a particularly fragile one. The success or failure of the business, or the distance between start up and wealth building, hangs in the balance daily. However, the death knell rarely tolls on the big mistakes, or making a wrong decision. Instead, it is the silent killers that slowly eat away at the company's resources.

Almost any business manager can make a solid decision about whether to focus on Social Networking or SEO. They can measure their man-power time against the money they have to invest, and choose the one which works right for them. Most work at home business managers are also adept at being self taught and self motivated. These are not the areas which will pull the company down. Instead it is the little things that erode a company.

Time

One of the most overlooked business resources is time. The ability to establish a good Time Management strategy is vital. A good business manager will put a monetary value on each dollar. In the start up stage, the dollar value should not be based on the current revenue generating power of the business, but the expected revenue generating power.

If the business is expected to earn $1500 a week, and the business owner works $60 hours a week, then a single hour is worth $25.00. But, you say, 'you cannot make $1500 a week from a work at home business!' With an attitude like that, you probably won't, but many people do.

Almost every business is a wealth generating tool for one person, and a scam for another. Not because some people are talented entrepreneurs, but because of the way they approach the business.

When valuing each hour as spending $25.00, the business owner suddenly has a value to put on surfing the web looking for articles, opening emails, participating in fun forums, and content creation.

They can now divide every task into two categories a) those that will create $25.00 in hard cash, b) those that create less than $25.00 in hard cash. The tasks that create less than $25.00 should be outsourced as quickly as possible.

One of the biggest time wasters is surfing the web. Many small business owners hop from one web mentoring site to another, hoping to one day find someone who will make life easier. Instead, find one site and follow the program that makes that site work. Or, pay for a course. Either of these methods will reduce the time wasted each week, and leave more time for generating revenue.

The business owner also needs to learn how to calculate their lost time from taking a lunch, running errands, throwing a load of laundry in, vacuuming the rug. Each of these things reduces the amount of time spent generating revenue.

The best method of building a Time Management campaign is to divide the work day into sections. In red, write in the amount of time spent at revenue generating practices, and use a blue pen to write in the time value lost in that hour.

It will not take long before the business owner starts taking control over their time. This does not mean that a business owner cannot spend a few hours surfing the forums and Social Network looking for resources that may help them in the future. Just limit this time to 'after work hours.'

About the Author

Mark Walters is a third generation entrepreneur and author. He offers free training and investing videos designed to speed you towards financial independence at http://www.cashflowinstitute1.com/Articles.html